Avatar: Uprising
by TheAlderHollow
Summary: (Formerly A Boy on the Road) Set immediately after Avatar's Korra's natural death at age 82, and is about the next Avatar. The world is at the zenith of its industrial growth: overpopulated, polluted, governed corruptly, has civil unrest, and is on the cusp of a massive social upheaval. I do not own Legend of Korra or any part of the Avatar-Universe.
1. Hobos and Vagabonds

The day was young and warm and damp to breathe when the boy saw the hobo's roadside campfire some half-a-mile ahead, smoke like an ostrich's neck bending in the wind and forming a faded head. The rivers in sight of the road surging and choking on storm water and bare mud. Right now, the rivers were so thick with mud you could bend them, send a torrent down on someone and suffocate them, either from the mud or from poison that ran through so many of the rivers. That was spring every year in the Earth Kingdom.

The boy was a short and stocky creature, built like the weathered stone in a field, ground down by hunger and hardship. He was 17 now, on the road for 5 years. A week could pass with a hardly a mouthful of rice.

His face was long and his cheeks hollowed, his eyes big and deeply brown; almost black. He wore his hair in a ponytail down his back. His shirt and trousers were brown sackcloth. His skin was brown and here and there marked with the healed gashes of fights past: he'd originally taken to the road to be with outcasts more like himself; hobos wouldn't judge him for his shyness, and animals who spoke in ways that were simple and straight-forward.

Not all had much friendship to share, consumed as they were sometimes by their own hunger, by their own demons, or their own fear of what this very strong-looking boy might try to do to them.

Some of the fights he'd won, some he'd lost but they'd spared him a worser beating, and some he just escaped. The latter were usually those with the police. Those were the toughest and the most unforgiving. When one policewoman left a deep cut in this stomach that he was lucky didn't get deeper than the skin, the boy cursed Chief Beifong and her invention of metalbending. He hated metal. It was cold and reminded of all things he did not want in his life; or in life at all.

As the boy approached the campfire, the 4 hobos greeted him with guarded friendliness, "Say boy, you headed to Gaoling."

He nodded thoughtfully and stiffly, as if slightly frightened.

The vagabonds looked at each other and then one of them said, an older man of solid build and great height but high voice, "Well, you've got miles to go. A pot of rice and wild onions on the fire. Not much to share, but a bite more than you look like you have on you." He waved the boy to an open spot in their little circle.

The boy let a faint grin come out and sat with his head on his knees and arms around his legs.

The man who'd invited him and looked like the leader (or rather the spokesmen; vagabonds do not have chiefs, only those they let speak for the little clans that come together like dust tornadoes on the road, and fall a part just as quickly), said to him, "I'm Bird," he pointed to shrunken but young woman at his side, "This is Tassle," and then to the old men with him, "This is Pong and Pao."

"We're cousins," Pung and Pao said together.

They looked at the boy and waited. He knew that meant.

"I'm Tyro" he mumbled, barely loud enough for them hear.

"Where you comin' from?" Tassled asked.

"The Great Divide."

During the Winter's the torrent of travelers died down, the bandits were fewer and farther between. Strange but edible plants grew in the caves of the tunnels. Tyro had found it easy to hide there.

"And where have you all come from?"

Pao interjected, "From the same place as everyone else, the earth."

Bird explained with a warm smirk, "He likes to quote the things the air nomads tell him. He's trying to become an enlightened hermit."

"And I will too!"

"Anyways, I'm coming down from Si Wong desert. Wintered out there. Tassle and Pao-Pung left Omashu several weeks ago."

Tassle interjected, "Headed to Kyoshi. I got a sister who's one of the Warriors."

Tyro thought for a moment. Omashu was a big city. In the big cities, the begging could be good, even if the police were dangerous.

"Why leave?" he asked.

Tassle's voice became somber, "For the same reason everyone's leavin' everywhere: Ba Sing Se, Omashu, Gaoling, the Fire Nation, Republic City, Yu Dao….Nothin' works anymore. The water's so dirty it can kill ya faster than thirst, the food costs you a firstborn, the police are scarier than gangs, and councilors have to be paid to do anything, which means they work for factory owners. Avatar Aang thought he was building a new world when founded Republic City," She pointed to the foul smelling river, the black and slightly orange river gushing nearby "And now _it's all gone to shit."_


	2. Jasmine and Ginseng

_**Jasmine and Ginseng**_

Tyro had left his fireside companions farther behind on the road. Tassle was taking a road farther west to Kyoshi, hoping to pass by several of the tent-towns in the far corner of the Kingdom, to clam and worm on the humid shores.

Pao-Pung had left with Bird father east and North and said nothing of why or what they would do when they go there. Tyro had not asked.

His pack was lighter now in the Spring with a only a long thick patchwork of leather to keep him dry in the rain, and a soft roll to rest his head on. The land father south toward Gaoling flattened out from the hillier ring of mountains, like a blanket pulled taut over a bed, but still soft to touch.

It had been two years since he had slept on real bed. That was he'd been waylaying in Ba Sing Se's Lower Ring. He'd a met a boy there, outside a dingy cluttered music club with brightly lit signs advertising the specials on drinks. Tyro had waited outside, unable to pay his way in: a single copper piece.

The boy was at least 2 or 3 years older than Tyro, with dark green clean and crisp trousers that cut off at the knee and a bright yellow shirt with a fold buttoned across the front. H was very tall and his skin lightly tan, but his hair was greasy and tangled in thick bolts like tree roots. His lips were thick, almost pouty. The look in eye made it seem as if he was always on the brink of a prank only he knew about it.

The boy smiled at him and tossed Tyro a copper, "That's yours."

"Thanks." The time between their eyes meeting and the coin toss was so fast Tyro didn't know how to respond.

"You can repay me by letting me buy you a drink." The boy waved for him to come along.

The smoke was thick, the rice-wine was strong and made Tyro wince before the fire slid down his throat and into his stomach, releasing a pleasant warm feeling.

They exchanged names. Tyro was awkward and silent and the older boy pretended that he wasn't.

"I brought a girl here once. On a date."

"Yeah," he muttered although he really didn't want to know.

"Yeah, didn't work out." He went to pick up Tyro's glass to give it to the bartender for a refeal, but his hand lingered for a few moments, "But female companionship, not my cup of tea." He took the hand away.

That made Tyro's ears feel a little warm, and he gave the older boy a questioning look, "Not your cup of tea?"

"Well, you know," He was looking straight into his eyes, "Some guys prefer jasmine, and others like…ginseng."

Within the hour, they were on a train out of the Lower Ring, a metal snake on a cliff over a valley that stretched out far bellow on either side. The Lower Ring was at least twice as massive as the Middle and Upper taken together, so large it seemed to have its own weather systems. Thick black smoke came from factory stacks so numerous and bunched together that some sections looked like badlands. With the smoke there was an odor of human filth, human bodies and human death arising from it all in the steam of a warm season.

"Do you live in the Upper Ring?" Tyro asked, open-mouthed and open-eyed.

"Not quite. The Middle. My house is sweet though," he answer, learning against the window.

Tyro woke in the dark morning hours lying on this back, his host huddled close and arm over his waist.

This was as good a time as any to make a getaway out of the Middle Ring. This house did not in fact belong to his host. It belonged to his disapproving parents. Tyro slid out from under his grasp and out of the bed and it was then that he noticed how tall and thin and soft he was: muscled, but not greatly. Graceful, but not agile.

The boy sat up also and smiled at him sleepily, his eyes only half-open. "My cousin will like this story, how I met up some rough trade."

"What?"

"You. You're what people like us call 'rough trade'"-the boy reached out for Tyro's arm and gripped it gently. He placed his thumb on a long scar and rubbed it, "like here. Where'd you get that?"

Tyro thought for a moment, trying to remember, "From a fight in Omashu with another kid. I had this Pineapple and I gave him a piece but he said he wanted half. He cut me with an army survival knife."

The boy brought his hand up to Tyro's shoulder, "And that one?"" It was a large burn shaped like an imploding, dying star.

"A firebender in the Republic, near the border. Me and a bunch of other hobos were crossing illegally."

"A soldier?" He asked and arched his brow a little.

Tyro shook his head, "A militiaman, from one of the border towns. They say they're just trying to keep out criminals and hobos, but if they catch you they sell you to one of the triads in Republic city or Omashu. Or just take everything you've got on you."

"Did you win?"

"I didn't get captured."

"And the boy and the pineapple?"

"He lost his piece in the bargain." He smiled at himself. He hadn't hurt the kid truly, but left him with a nasty conk and a worse headache.

The older boy chuckled quietly, "That's what I mean. You're rough trade."

That made Tyro grin, and his stomach seem to float even more from the wonder of it. Somebody thought he was…interesting. Tough. Somebody several days from now would be listening to a story about him and think this Tyro boy was fascinating, a person they would like to meet. He was gearing up to share a few more stories, but his host cut him off.

"Are you going to stay here, in the city?"

"No. I'm going to winter outside Sandlocke City. Some tent-towns there, and freedom, and quiet."

"Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, if you needed customers…well there's me, and I know a couple of cousins who prefer…ginseng. They pay well." The boy lied back down.

That made Tyro's stomach drop right back down, "I'm….I'm not a prostitute." He caught himself growling and sounding angrier than he wanted to, when he was really more just shocked.

"I didn't mean it personally. You just told me you were on the road, and when I saw your scars…."

He thought they came from pissed off johns.

Suddenly Tyron wanted to bend a pillar up from under the bed and pin him to the ceiling.

And then they heard voices.

"He's got another one of those freaks in his room. He snuck the little vagrant in last night probably." The voice was older and angry. It was approaching down the hallway outside the door.

The older boy broke in,-"That's my parent's guard. You gotta go, now. And be careful about the Dai Li, especially."

"The Dai Li are everywhere, anyways."

"They've been onto me for a while now."

Tyro couldn't stop to imagine what things might be done to him if he ended up in a Dai Li dungeon. He'd already thrown his clothes on when the door was kicked open. There, a large man in leather armor stood in horse stance, and another behind him.

The first stomped hard with his left leg, bringing up a chunk of the earthen floor, and with a heal-palm strike launched it hard and fast. Tyro blocked with forearm but still felt much of its power him square in the chest. He counterattacked quickly, stepping forward and with a chop down and across from high above his head; the kata sprouted several bars in the doorway, trapping the guard in an odd contortion and bring off his fee.t

"You degenerate-" by that time Tyro was out the window, and pounding his fists onto the outside wall to make an erratic staircase. When he gave a quick glance behind him he saw his bedmate spin kicking one earthen coin and then another at his pursuers.

Most boys Tyro found himself in a sleeping bag with were different. They were kind, or funny, or just good-looking. He thought it was funny how a scar on the face scared people away, but scars everywhere else drove them wild. They wanted to touch them, look at them, ask about them. The things he had seen and done. That was probably his favorite part. The human warmth of a hand, and of a friendly voice. They were a lot like him: runaways from home, on the road or riding the freight train.

The howl of a train called Tyro out of his reverie. He saw the black and grey shadow like a cliff shifting against the horizon, and beyond the massive cultivated field. Gaoling and its tent-towns of migrant workers were close now, he could tell.


	3. Drinking and Rioting

_**Drinking and Rioting**  
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The howl of a train called Tyro out of his reverie. He saw the black and grey shadow like a shifting line of cliffs beyond a great open field.

Growing in the field were ling fields of different kinds of fruit berries, green bushes looking like weeds I the light brown earth. On the other side of the road were beets, other root vegetables. Amongst them, small figures in straw cone hats bending down and rising again in busy activity.

Farther ahead, it seemed to him that the landscape had become jagged and rocky again It was a moment before he realized it was a shack-town, sprawled out as if literally dumped there by civilization as trash.

And the shack-town was trash, literally. Corrugated metal, scrapped signage, lacquered wood unfit to be burned, earthen walls bended into place, and other what-have-you's. People in roughspin and moved in and out of the shacks and across the streets with heavy, almost forceful gates, the weekly wash, baskets of half-rotten food and half-grown children. Their voices were loud and their eyes downcast.

_This is a migrant camp, _Tyro realized. They had been following the harvests north, likely to make one last harvest of fruit here, next in Cape Town before following the summer north again. The exodus would come soon, a great procession of trucks and buses and trains, sometimes without buying a ticket and hiding in the boxcars.

The begging would be bad here. He might manage a mouthful of rice or bell pepper from a kind family, but no money. As he went down the winding pathway he searched for a face that looked friendly enough to approach. Tyro hated this part of traveling. Going up and saying the first word always made his hands shake a little, and his eyes turn down to his feet no matter how hard he tried to look the other person in the eye. He tended to stutter too.

He noticed that he was coming into a more settle part of the town. There were taverns, soup and fruit juice carts, hardscrabble fenders and other hobos like himself Women in scant clothing walked the streets, calling to passersby if they needed a friend.

Tyro picked out one tavern, and leaning against its front wall was a very tall man, with a small torso and bristly black hair that stood straight upon his head. Gangly legs were folded on each other bony and nearly soft fleshless arms hung down like tree branches. He wore deep blue trousers with black suspenders and a white longshirt. Tyro thought he looked at least 21.

As he passed through into the doorway, a puff of the man's cigarette came into Tyro's face, but something was strange about it: it smelled especially foul, like a mixture of skunk and burning wood.

Inside he saw rock tables and benches, and on them a few mid-day customers facedown and drooling in from emptied cups.

He chose to sit at the empty bar, hoping that maybe the barkeep, if he ranked up the courage to speak to her, would give him some tips on where to find temporary work or at least a soup-line somewhere.

"What could I get for two coppers?"

"Something at least a step above car fuel." She answered, with the smallest hint of sympathy in her voice.

"That's fine," he said and laid the coins down.

She took out a clear bottle from behind the shelf and poured two shots for him. "The second one's on me. You look like you could use it."

Tyro downed the first one quickly. The barkeep had lied: car fuel was probably better.

"Don't get too comfortable," a voice called from the other end of the bar, "Security's doin' a sweep for the second time since I been here."

It was the man Tyro had seen outside. He came and took a stool next Tyro at the bar.

"A sweep?"

"Yeah, the last one was a day and a half ago."

"You've only been here for a day and half?"

"Well, no I've hopped by the taverns down the street."

"Non-stop?"

"No, I took a nap out back 4 hours ago. And this bender's on his 3rd day."

Tyro was feeling his mouth drop a little farther down each time he spoke. "How are you awake?"

The man go another shot of clear liquor poured for him, leaned in close chuckled in a low but proud voice, "Well, there's lemonade stands in this town where it ain't sugar that's the secret ingredient."

He knocked back the car fuel, letting out a wincing grin.

Tyro noticed that the man's wide eyes were dirty yellow, with deep red veins tightly around the edges.

It was then that they heard yelling and shuffling outside: angry shouts, fearful cries, stern commands, but all of it too indistinct to make out. Tyro learned over and saw through an open air window, several of the migrants running back down the road, several stopping to throw rocks, and several bending up walls that were quickly destroyed.

"Keep cool, kid," the man urged.

Tyro wanted to tell him he had fought cops a dozen times, but Tyro he had also handled enough drunks to not argue.

There were men and women wearing metal armor of long strips across their torsos, as braces across forearms and the lower legs. But the clothes they wore underneath were all irregular: brown, green, butternut, even the odd black and red. They forcing forward a crowd of migrants, swatting with batons and shoving forward.

"Those aren't Kingdom Police," Tyro muttered to no one in particular.

"Told you, they're Agency."

He had heard of the Agency before, but never encountered them. A security force for hire, usually by factory owners and wealthy people. The drunkard stood up and

The long sheet hanging in the doorway was moved aside and with the soft rattling of metal in stepped two of the guardswomen from outside. Tyro was keenly aware that the shouting and ruckus was growing louder.

One of them pointed a baton, "You two, at the bar. Stand up."

They complied.

The same guardswoman came over and demanded again, "Show your hands, both of you."

Tyro looked over at the drunkard's palms and saw that they were pale and soft by comparison, but with what looked like a faint coating of soot and ash.

"You're clear. What business do you have in town?"

"None except the one's I patronize."

"Fire nation?" Her voice had a studied flatness.

"Yup."

"Bender?"

"Sure am. A circus performer, once upon a time."

"You should speak with the UFV Employment Office. If you were willing to do rough work, they can refer to you us. Not too many firebenders in the ranks, so the pay is good."

The drunkard crossed his arms, "Yeah, sounds like a real career opportunity." The disdain was thick.

The guardswoman ignored him. She approached Tyro and his right hand in both of hers, examining it like a doctor with quick rough touches.

"Are you picker?" She asked him.

"No." Tyro felt himself becoming even smaller by the moment under the confident glares of two expert metalbenders standing over him. "I'm a hobo."

"A vagrant?" she said the word with deep disdain, "You're standing on UFV property. You're trespassing unless you're here as a field worker or otherwise employed."

_United Fruit and Vegetable, _Tyro thought, _they must own the whole goddamn town._

"You look you're built for the work. There's going to be spots open after today. You could scab." Her tone was forceful.

"No, I'm not gonna be a scab." He knew what scabs were: when workers refused to show up, scabs took their place, often with the very same pay raises the original workers wanted.

Her eyes narrowed, and called back to her partner, "Check his pack for literature."

The guardswoman tore off this sleeping roll and held aloft with two metal pins.

"There might be pamphlets stuffed inside."

Without further elaboration, two of her bracer strips flew off and started to shred the sleeping roll into small pieces.

He almost reached out but the guardswoman tapped his ribs with a baton, warning that of a harder strike.

"_Literature?"_

Tyro hadn't read a book or scroll sense he had left home 5 years ago. He never liked it and never got very good, and to this day he knew just enough to read signage.

She tapped his ribs again but harder this time with the baton.

"Are you here as an agitator?"

"I don't know what that means."

The other guardswoman spoke, "I'm sick of the playing dumb acts."

"He certainly doesn't look bright. Alright, take the vagrant into detention." The first guardswoman stepped aside as they both released metal bracers from their arms, readying to bind him at the wrists and ankles.

Tyro stepped back quickly, the shackles seemed ready to fly. And then something inside himself seemed to break.

He stomped a great earthen wall twice his own height and with a punch sent it at his attacker like a wave, faster than his mind realized he was doing it. She was pinned against the window and her body hung on the outside, limp and unconscious.

As the other agent attempted to retaliate, with a clawed hand he grabbed at the earth under her and with twisting motion made it spin and fall, taking her off her balance and sending the metal band directly at the firebender's face.

"Nice, Short Rock!" the firebender called out.

The drunkard did a clumsy spin kick and a comet's tail of flame knocked the guardswoman out the door.

Tyro was vaguely aware now how _loud_ the scene was.

"You're in it now, kid!" the firebender proclaimed, laughing joyously.

"I wasn't doing anything wrong. They could've left me alone!"

"Not how the world works. The whole place is a game board, and everyone's a player whether they want to be or not. Now do you wanna team up and fight our way outta this mess or you just gonna try to crawl in a hole and wait for the damn Kingdom to come down on you?"

He _hated_ this, but before saying anything the metalbender has risen again on her feet and two shackles nearly caught the drunk, barely able to deflect.

"Listen, Short Rock, you seem like the type who doesn't like to come outta your shell, _so wear it."_

"What?"

"_Wear the dirt."_

Tyro understood, and with a kata of two fists thrusting upwards, his whole body was encased in a 3 inch layer of rock, leaving only the space over his eyes in order to see. They couldn't get the shackles on him that easy now. _Why hadn't he tried this before?_

He charged at her, and even though she tried to put metal binds on him it they just glanced off his armor. He slammed hard into her stomach, lifted her up above his should and then practically dived as he forced her into the ground, hearing several painful-sounding cracks. She groaned in deep, numbing pain.

Only then did Tyro realize that he was now out in the street, surrounded by agents. More metal bands for flung at him, but all were bended away or simply dinged off uselessly. It didn't make any sense: why not just try more stone? Or overpower him and crush Tyro in his own armor? Before he answered his own question, he bended several walls of rock at two of his attackers. On dodged, only to have a boulder break across his face and spin back flat on the ground.

He heard the firebender laugh, "They don't how to deal with plain vanilla guys like you!"

Tyro was starting to understand: the metalbenders had lost touched with their roots. They were so focused on metal, with its lethality and speed, they didn't know how to hold their ground as a rock does.

Tyro could barely keep track of everything that was happening now: He wrestled another Agency man off his feet, and then flung him against a cabbage cart. The migrants were running all around him now, some were forming katas and bending, but they were…..cheering and running and letting out battle cries. The street was on fire, bursts of flame were everywhere. Noxious clouds of gas that burned his eyes brooded around him. The human figures became as like ghosts reenacting a battle that had happened thousands of years ago, grey-white shadows materializing out of the scenery and vanishing again with muted violence. To Tyro it all seemed loud and unnervingly quiet at the same time.

He had started a riot.


	4. Getting Back to Your Roots

Tyro sat hunched over, on a small raised platform of rock no higher than a sidewalk. The firebender from the tavern sat next to him, passing him a skin of water. He had a thin trail of blood coming from a head wound; Tyro had a massive bruise on his upper right arm. Both were covered now with miscellaneous scrapes, little scratches and smaller bruises. One of the firebender's suspenders had been broken in the melee, and so now his black trousers hung heavily on side, and making it easier to see what a thinly fleshed man he was.

Both were shell-shocked, but Tyro most of all.

"What…what did I just do?

"You just turned a whole street battle in favor of the underdog, Short Rock" he explained, but sounded as though he could barely belief it himself, "And now it looks like the Agency and the UFV have just lost control of their own goddamn town."

"My name is Tyro, by the way." His voice was dull.

The firebender put out a hand for a shake. "Ran-Shaw. Most of the time it's just Shaw, though. Pleased to be raising hell with you."

Tyro shook his hand with out making eye contact.

"I got to say, for all the taverns and circuses and crazy parties I've been to and worked for, it's been a…while," Shaw's tone turned suddenly mournful and sad, "since I had real fun like that. Like, doing something that wasn't just about…."he seemed to lost the grip on his own thoughts and the sentence trailed off.

The street around them was had been wasted. What could have been burned already had been. The shacks had been torn up and their pieces scattered. The ground itself had been as well, cannibalized countless times to be made into a weapon. Most of the wounded had been carried off, even the Agency forces, who were unceremoniously run out of town, with the less wounded forced to carry those who could not walk. A few of the migrants milled around, examining the wreckage, more from lack of anything else to do rather than interest in actually finding something salvage. Farther toward the center of town, a cloud of black smoke rose above its low building and was carried softly by a damp spring breeze.

_HE_ turned the battle? That was ridiculous. He had just defended himself from a squad of security agents.

After Tyro took a long swig of water, he said, "You're a long way from Republic City."

"I was born in the Fire Nation actually. Left as a refugee three years ago when the war started."

"Funny thing, so did I."

Some 140 years ago, Fire Lord Zuko and Avatar Aang had put down a rebellion of Ozai loyalists. The survivors were jailed largely, and some pardoned after renewing loyalty oaths that were spoken ritually in every town in the whole Fire Nation, with signed scrolls posted as well, disavowing Ozai, his violence and their prior treasons in the most effusive and pleading words possible.

But Ozai's dream didn't die: despite everything that had happened, a few conservatives believed in an empire without end, built on the ashes of a burned world that would be made of metal, industry, coal and most importantly, the strong and the honorable.

They held onto their place near the top of the country's hierarchy: generals, factory barons, bankers and the police. It was decades before they coalesced into a conservative political party that championed military intervention in foreign affairs and industrialization.

Three years ago, they staged a coup against Fire Azula that failed to capture her, and a civil war had raged since between royalists and the rebels. The last image Tyro had of the place was a view from far out at sea, the capitol city a small burning image.

Shaw gave him a questioning look, "What were you doing in the Fire Nation?"

"When I left home, I wanted to get as far away from my parents as I could. The poles are cold and there's no earth, and I didn't know much about the Air Nomad temples." He left the rest unsaid.

"You said you were in some circuses?" Tyro continued.

"Yeah, worked in a few for a couple of years. Used to be a schoolteacher, too. I liked that quite a lot. Well, I liked the kids anyway, and they liked me."

Tyro wondered why he had left. Those were the types of questions that always came to mind meeting people on the road, but were better left unasked.

"Welp, kid, my stomach's been running on liquor and pretzel snacks for three days running. I don't know how, but I need to scrounge a bite to eat outta this place." Shaw stood up, brushing the dust from his clothes.

"We could beg. I still have my bowl," Tyro offered.

Shaw cocked his head back to look at him and raised an eyebrow: "You're a beggar?"

"It's how I eat most of the time. Or I steal from a field. Or forage myself." There weren't too many places you could do the latter, however. Most of the forests nowadays were either chopped down or the private fenced property of the emperor in Ba Sing Se, a local governor or wealthy citizen.

Shaw adjusted his black grandfather hat to shield his eyes from the sun. "Why?" He gave a soft kick to Tyro's arm, "You're a strong guy. You could be 86-ing guys like me out taverns, or you know," he turned to the ruined shack-town, "Make good money roughing up strikers and organizers."

Tyro didn't answer.

Then it hit them: There fields of goddamn food in every which direction.

"I guess you're goin' pickin' after all, Short Rock."

A strip of barren earth and an electric fence encompassed the migrant-town and separated it from the massive fields that just yesterday were under the tight control of the UFV Co, its own guards and the Agency squads it had hired.

Rock outcroppings made in the melee had torn open holes in the fence, and where guards would have stood were now migrants in straw hats, now by their presence forbidding anyone to enter. Near the main gate a great crowd murmuring of several hundred had gathered, and Shaw said that he could spot several of their own circled around an earthen platform controlling the crowd.

"Other pickers?"

"Looks like it."

"Keep still." Tyro commanded and then with two raising fists like the lets of a mantis raised Shaw on rock pillar several feet high, who let out a very unmanly sounding gasp.

"You could've warned me, asshole!"

"I did. I told you to keep still. What do you see?"

Shaw stood up straight and leaned in close. "Well, calm mostly. If you ask me, there's some kind of union running things here now."

Tyro wasn't sure what kind of union Shaw was talking about, but honestly he got tired of feeling like he was asking dumb questions.

Tyro lowered his newfound companion back down and together they started to approach the crowd slowly. They waited near the back, waiting for whatever would happen next.

Shaw poked the shoulder of one migrant man, a squat and heavy man with big arms and long beard. He turned around.

"Is anyone going to be allowed into the fields?"

"Eventually. Once word comes down from Koko and the Council. She's sent someone to speak for her, but she'll appear in person herself. She makes it a point to do that often."

"Koko?" Tyro echoed.

"President of our union: United Growers and Farm Workers. She was honorably elected by the way with a majority vote," he said the last part with particular pride.

"Say," the migrant spoke after a moment of silence, "You're the one who turned the tables on those Skull-crackers in the first place. I saw you lift one up and pile-drive her into the dirt!" The old man let out a deep congratulatory laugh and slapped Tyro hard on the shoulder. "Koko will want to meet you!"

Shaw snorted and said to his friend, "I told you. You're partly responsible for this mess."

"I..I was just…No. I'm not planning on sticking around. I'm getting back on the road."

"Oh, there's no need for the 'aw shucks' excuse. The whole town has heard your story by now. The wrestling boy who took down 3 squads of Pigs single-handed. After word spread around, suddenly no one wanted to just run like we're used to doing, and the pigs were so surprised they didn't know how to react."

"Why they were doing a raid anyways?" Tyro asked.

"We were organizing and giving out pamphlets, speeches and that sort of thing."

Tyro remembered then the words of the agents who had tried to arrest him in the first place.

Shaw spoke, "But didn't Prince Wu enshrine liberty to assemble in the Imperial Constitution? Gaoling's an autonomous state, but it still has to play by those rules."

The old man spoke huffed bitterly but spoke matter-of-factly, "Not on someone's else property you don't. They've never recognized our union and refused to speak with Koko to negotiate our wages. They refuse to talk about it at all. They tell us what they'll pay and we have to accept it or leave."

Tyro was feeling a little bored with all this talk about laws and politics. "So what will you do with the crop?" he asked, trying to get the conversation back to the matter at hand; and in his stomach.

"Well share it of course."

"How?"

"As much as each person needs."

Before any of them could speak a cry went out from the front of the crowd demanding silence. Ascending the earthen platform by its side steps was an dark-skinned woman with her black hair in a bun made of tight braids at the back of her head. Her face was round her cheeks puffy but worn by wind and leathered by long years under hot suns. Her eyes where a very dark green, fixed in a gaze heavy with dignity and pride. Her clothes were finer than that of the other migrants, but still simple and plain: a cotton yellow, sleeveless dress and a length of hemp rope tied about the waist. Where Tyro's muscle was bulkier, and Shaw's nonexistent, she was somewhere at wiry middle. Clearly very strong, but it was a body built for endurance rather than power. Tyro guessed she was forty.

Attending her was a man and woman, both of whom seemed to be made smaller by her sheer presence. The man wore a green longshirt that reached his knees and trousers, the woman in a dress also.

When the first woman stood still on the top of the platform and looked down at the crowd, it was suddenly quiet.

The old man whispered, "That's Koko."

Her voice boomed: "We have always been one people." A small cheer came out of the crowd, "We lost our farms together. We sharecropped together, were evicted from our land together. When the Skull-crackers murder our us and our children for exercising our imperially given rights, we fought our battles together, we _lost_ them together.

This time, we _won one_ together." Great, angry, celebratory hurrahs, but the one seemed made of stone, not moving or changing expression, but her gaze moving over the growing crowd.

She pointed at the green and brown field behind her, "Out there is the rightful fruit of _our _labor. We plant, we care for, we harvest. Ours is the toil."

"Ours is the toil," the gathering echoed back.

"Ours will be the fruit," Koko intoned.

"Ours will be the fruit," they echoed again.

"But Koko" a loud voice from somewhere nearer the center of the human mass, "The State police will be here in a matter of days. They'll have heavy tanks and more benders. They'll have an army. What do you expect we can actually do?"

"What _will you_ do? That's a question each man and woman must ask himself. I already know what I will do, as president" she gestured to the two persons behind her, "as chair of the Council. I will be with my people, whatever we do."

* * *

><p><em>Okay, so this ending in a bit of an awkward place, but I'm realizing that this chapter has kind gone on <em>really _long by comparison to the others, and I need to keep this story updated._

_Really hoping for feedback with this one._

_A few things I'm concerned about:_

_The dialogue between the characters._

_The flow of action seen in the tavern._

_Is the plot developing in a way that seems to flow smoothly and natural to you?_

_Really, any sort of criticism would be helpful so that I know how I'm doing._


	5. The Gaoling Defiance

They returned from the fields later that day with a mixed basket of strawberries, grapes, peaches, oranges, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, celery, onions and peppers.

The migrant man, whose name they now knew was Gow, said, "My wife and I, we'll just have it as a fruit salad, but we have chicken broth for the vegetables, it'll make a fine stew."

Tyro was licking his lips at the sound of the word "broth." Broth was rare, and meat rarer. He had barely had meat since he had left home 5 years ago. They were well-off people, but parents could still never afford meat more than once a week. One New Year's celebration, he'd seen his father slowly, with shaky hands, pull the wax paper off a chunk of meat, only to reveal that it was a steak. His mother's gasp was something he remembered distinctly for the rest of his life. So was the taste of the herbal rub on the outside from a recipe no one in their family had had the occasion to use in decades, and the warm red center. He thought that likely Gow had never had a bite of beef in the whole of his life, though Tyro himself had passed by huge beef farms on his travels, protected by tall stonewalls and electric barbed wire.

Gow's wife was a tall-looking woman, with long loose hair, a pinched face, and rubbery looking skin. Her smiles were soft and cautious as she let their children, caught up in the strangely celebratory atmosphere that now hung over the shack-town, get carried away in playful reenactment. They took turns being the heroes and the bad police.

At the table sat their oldest son, a boy about Tyro's age, but his face looked a little baby-ish by comparison. He smiled with dimples and the same pinched cheeks of his mother, but they were finer and smaller. His hair was shaved all along the sides, but grown out at the top. Tyro tried to stare or smile at him too much.

"What did she mean, Koko, when she said you all lost your land together?" Tyro asked.

"Decades ago, the UFV, and the some other company's started doing special breeding projects on crops: made them grow extra-huge, extra fertile, extra-resistant to drought. On all kinds of stuff: berries and vegetables and rice, too," Gow went on, "They had different breeds for different climates so you could grow practically anything, anywhere."

Shaw leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the back of his head, "Sounds like good news for farmers. People been breeding plants for thousands of years."

"It should've been," Gow admitted, "But nature ain't like a green house where you can keep all your plants and breeds separate. Seeds are carried on the wind easily. When their seeds came into our fields, they said that we were stealing their invention.

They made a class action lawsuit against us and demanded that we small-timers pay. If you ask me, that was the plan the whole time. We lost the suit. First we were in debt. Then we had mortgage land that had been owned by our families for thousands of years UFV's financial men. Then we were sharecroppers. And…now we're just pickers."

"And what's this union supposed to do?" Shaw asked, his tone sounding rather cynical.

Gow's wife spoke up, "Koko's talked about it all right here" she seemed to sail to the kitchen table and hand them a faded brown, wrinkled pamphlet. "When we were all different farmers, we weren't united. We had family feuds and old grudges and didn't work together. When we own our own labor again, it'll be different."

Tyro looked awkwardly at it for a moment, trying to read its title, "Uh…"

Shaw, maybe sensing what was happening, grabbed it, "Syndicalism?"

"Each according to his ability, each according to his need." Gow repeated cheerfully.

Tyro leaned closed to his friend, "What does that mean?"

"It means workers owning the companies," Shaw explained, and then turned to Gow and his wife, "But your union president said it herself, UFV isn't going to just let you stay here and do what you want. It's only a matter of time before the cavalry arrives."

"That's true. But we've sent word to the other migrant camps and unions. They can't put us all down." Shaw and Tyro glanced at each other knowingly: they rarely ever had to put them all down. They had heard the stories; a battalion of State or Imperial Police show up, started shredding the crowd with sharp metal blades, and soon the unionists were sent running and screaming for their lives….and back on the job,

"And…"Gow's hands clenched and unclenched on the table, "We can't live this way anymore. Our last two children…they passed young. How can a child fight the flu with only a mouthful of rice at most a day? We pick baskets of vegetables a day and can barely ever afford any of them. Every year, epidemics come and it seems every family looses somebody. If a kid is ever seen with advanced bending, they take them away and the child comes back years later attacking his own people. "

After they gobbled up the soup, and soaked the broth up with rice, Shaw and Tyro excused themselves to have a breath of fresh air outside.

Shaw pulled out another one of his strange smelling cigarettes and lit it with a small flame from his finger. Tyro saw how his friend's hands were shaking. Shaw seemed to notice and said, "Normally, I'd try of a little hair of the badgermole, but I ain't so bad I'm gonna beg that man for a little sake. Not that a little would be helpful anyways in this state."

"What are we gonna do? The state police are gonna show up with tanks and metalbender squads. It doesn't matter what the pickers try to do now. They're gonna get slaughtered, just to make a point."

"You thinkin' of buggin' out?" Shaw asked, the cigarette muffling his voice, "That's a very un-earthbender of you. I thought your kind normally stood their ground?"

"I mind my own business and keep to myself."

"Technically, that's what they're doing now. But sometimes it ain't enough."

It Tyro flinch to think of what would happen to Gow, and his wife and his son when the police force showed.

"We can't win that fight."

Shaw sighed. "No, I supposed we can't…"

The bellow of a deep horn went over the shack-town. It seemed to be like a call to emergency, and Shaw and Tyro watched as the migrants raced toward where the outer edge met the road.

******  
>In spite of himself, Tyro followed Gow's family and Shaw to the source of the horn blow.<p>

They found what seemed like the whole town gathered, people shifted on their feet uneasily, spoke to one another in frightened tones. Shaw grabbed him and together they pushed themselves to front of the crowd.

Several benders among the migrants had raised up sections of chest high walls. The metal fencing of the fields had already been laid low. Across the field, Tyro saw faint and brief glints of the sunlight off bright silver shapes, several humanoid smaller ones seemingly in orbit around what looked in the distance like several rolling square blocks.

100 Years ago during the Warlord Era, Kuvira had used whole battalions of independent mecha-suits. It wasn't long before it was known that lavabenders could easily defeat them. They were easily knocked off balance, and broke down constantly.

What had replaced them were squat tanks on rolling treads. In battle, they fired explosive and incidiniary shells from short, snub-nosed barrels, protected by 4 or 5 earthbenders who protected it from direct attack. On open field, they were practically unbeatable.

Tyro counted at least 12 in all, crawling closer at a steady pace.

Finally, the green and silver figures of the Gaoling Police were only around a hundred yards away.

"It's a head game." Shaw commented, "They want the pickers to crack before it even starts."

"When they call out to disperse?" In the many times Tyro had been part of a raided hobo camp, it always started with a call to disperse.

"There ain't gonna be a call to disperse. And I'm guessing there's other soldiers at the two roads into town. Most of us aren't supposed to make it out."

Moments later, Tyro heard a dull faint puff of a canon far away, and then immediately the earthen wall nearest him exploded, shattering it completely.

There was another faint thud of canon fire, and this time the shell did not fail to hit a human target. Tyro felt the explosion happen behind him, and then he heard screaming.

When he looked for Gow, he saw only a shape lying face down on the ground and with his side shredded like pulverized meat. Stone and rock and metal were zipping every which way around him in a blur like humming birds.

He lost track of Shaw, but saw Gow's laid low on the dirt by a police officer, who was forcing his shiny steel boot into the boy's gut until it seemed it was about to bust through and disembowel him.

Tyro could only stand in place and shudder. He wanted to be in a cave in the Great Divide. He wanted to bend himself a hole and hide in it, or wear a suit of rock and what for this nightmare to pass. He wanted to be left alone and to live his days listening to old hobos tell tall tales and sharing a sleeping bag with handsome faces and strong hands and eating warm stew and rice.

He had been brawls before, and sometimes they were even kind of fun. But he had seen someone be murdered like that in front of felt his world become blurrier, fainter, quieter.

And then something in him seemed to snap awake to intense, unfathomable life.

Shaw crouched low and did a swinging kick off his hands, and trail of concussive fire took the trooper off his balance. He hit another in the back with a fireball.

Shaw felt a breeze pick-up, and then it was a wind. It was whirling around in a spiral, becoming fiercer by the moment, and the soon the bloodbath unfolding around him was being shrouded in dust. Killers and victims alike wore faint brown veils.

Shaw looked up, and the sky was deep sea blue.

It was only when he turned to look to his left that he saw a figure seeming to float some two dozen feet off the ground on an air sprout like that of the Nomads. He was short and tan and had a long braid of silky black hair down his back, now flaying in the wind like a rope.

It was Tyro.

And where once there had been small brown eyes there only two glowing white lights.

The whole battlefield had stopped. When Tyro lifted up an open palm to the air effortlessly, a great outcropping of rock rose up ferosciously growing like a cliff side. It lifted a tank off the ground and flipped it upside down in a roll, crushing a nearby trooper and leaving him a red mess like a squashed grape.

Metal projectiles flew up at him, but circling streams of fire swatted them away.

Shaw couldn't keep track of everything that was happening: a tank fired a shell at his friend, (if that's what he still was), but he destroyed it mid-air with a fireball, and then answered with three more at the remaining tanks.

With a kata of two clutching hands, Tyro lifted several of the soldiers up in their by the metal bands of their own armor and rolled them up like paper, then flung them away several feet.

When the migrants still breathing and standing began to let out cheers of awe-struck victory, only then did Shaw himself realize what was happening:

He was witness a power not seen in this world for more than 17 years.

Tyro opened his eyes and was looking at a flat brown ceiling, and saw the line a candle light shudder and shift. The air felt cold and moist.

_Nighttime. It was nighttime,_ he thought.

His own tiredness came upon him. No ache, no pain. Just a sense that he had drained every drop of energy had been drained from his muscles. He turned his head with great effort. He saw a woman in a plain yellow dress with a bun of braids, sitting at the foot of his bed and reading from a sheet of paper. He saw at his immediate right, Shaw was leaning against a wall and taking a swig from a metal flask.

"How long have you known?" His friend asked in a casual, slightly sarcastic manner.

Tyro looked around the room and made out the shape of a square room of smooth rock walls, papered over with maps of the whole kingdom, Gaoling State, the city, the camps, the fields, newspaper articles connected by strings tiled to nails. A small wooden desk piled over with papers and books.

"What?" Tyro managed to mumble.

"You know, Short Rock, when I saw you take down those pigs pretty much by your own damn self, I knew you had talent." Shaw stopped to take another swig, "But you've been holding out on me."

Tyro tried to remember what had happened after seeing Gow's body lying bloodied in the dirt, the policeman trying to disembowel his son. There was only that sensation of an incredible presence.

"I get it. You wake and told that you did a whole bunch of crazy shit you don't remember" Shaw chuckled, "Been in that place before."

Then Koko spoke from the chair in her gravely voice, "The people are outside. Celebrating. The word is spreading of the 'Gaoling Defiance.'"

"But…the police…they…"

"You made them stop. We won. This battle at least."

A moment of pause while Tyro tried to understand what she was saying.

"Our messengers are sending word to the other camps, and on the radio. I'd rather we wait a moment first, but I know when a ship is sailing whether I want it to or not."

She leaned closer, her expression serious but…hopeful? "The people have missed you during these long years. But our Avatar has returned to us."


	6. Touch of the Wind

_This is where my story starts to diverge from the canon, particularly ATLA: The story of how the Air Nomads are reborn has changed. The new explanation is here in the chapter._

_This is a chapter for a new character, Yangchen (__**not**__ the Air Nomad avatar that preceeded Aang) born around the time of Korra's death._

* * *

><p>Since her earliest memory, Yangchen had lived in a silent world. The only sound she could remember before coming down with the Red Fever was the sharp, echoing tap of a staff on the stone halls of her temple. Every so often she would tap her own staff, trying to keep the memory of that sound alive. Maybe even hear it new.<p>

She never did.

But she liked the feel of the vibrations from the wood. Yangchen also liked the way if reliably drew people's eyes to her when she wanted their attention. _Tap-tap-tap_, every so often like a tick or a prayer, even as the memory of what it really was faded away completely.

She had been 4 years old when the Red Fever had spread a rash over her arms and chest, made her tongue look like strawberry. When she woke up without her hearing, an older nun came to the temple from away and taught her how to speak with signs, forming words with her hands and facial gestures. Learning to read was strange, because the letters represented sounds she did not even know, but it came over time.

The poetry of the ancient gurus was the strangest of all. To read the verse of Laghima felt like receiving a letter from another world entirely, built of elements unlike anything she knew or could fathom. They called the wind on the high peaks "The voice passing through the throat of the world" or "the sound of Creation."

For Yangchen, wind was a thing you touched and felt and saw in the way the canopy of a forest turned a lighter shade of green. She knew who a person was with only a brief touch: soft like a breeze, or hard like a gale; biting like in winter or warm like in summer; dry and detached like in autumn, damp and cloying like in spring.

She first learned to truly fly with her glider when she was 12. She could drop small distances from a tower in the training yard and land, but the nuns ordered an older girl named Lio to take her up on a Flying Bison to a nearby peak and show her how to glide down along the mountainside. She guessed that Lio was about 14 or 15 years old. Where Yangchen was petite and evenly proportioned, Lio was tall, broad shouldered and had long strong arms under her yellow and orange robes. Where Yangchen had a slight red undertone to her skin, Lio had a touch of olive. Where Yangchen's smile was small and shy, Lio's was toothy and crooked. Both, however, wore their brown hair in the traditional style of Air Nomad women: shaved halfway across the top the front, and long in the back. Both spoke with signs. Lio had been hard of hearing since birth.

Yangchen remembered looking out from the high mountaintop down at the brown and green valley, framed by the grey of the clouds not far above and the stone not far below. The jagged face of the mountain was long and slopping, here and there marked with patches of pale green like pimples. To her left, the sea was blue and roiling.

She looked at the other girl with expectation, holding her glider staff upright.

Lio shook her head gently, "Your grip," she said with her hands.

The older girl took two great strides over to her and with long fingers gently pried Yangchen's hand a little bit off her staff, at the same time holding it in her own. Her touch was warm and dry.

"If your grip is light but firm, you have more control," she explained, "Too rigid, and you don't react smoothly enough with the wind."

With the touch of a switch, Lio released the wings of her glider, which were orange hemp fabric supported by thin, round wooden poles.

Yangchen did the same and when she grabbed the wooden poles and put the glider above and behind her, she checked her grip.

"Remember," Lio signed to her with a bent smile, "The wind here is fierce, but let it take you where you want to go. It's okay to be afraid, but don't act on fear. Watch the ground ahead of you. Always be 10 feet above. And don't crash."

She stepped aside to signal for Yangchen to go first.

She hesitated for a moment She could feel the gusting currents like a strong hand that tried to push her over one way and then another. She prayed to her Avatar namesake, and then stopped off into the void.

The mountain face dropped sharply away from her and after a moment of flight a powerful gale roller Yangchen twice over before she regained control. Then it seemed as if the air was slowly pressing her back down closer to the rock side- it was Lio's bending.

The mountainside further down was starting to green in- plant life was thicker, flatter with short scrub grass defiantly. When she looked to her left and right, Yangchen saw tall grey walls on either side closing in, funneling her to a narrow canyon.

Lio glided to her side. Yangchen frantically gestured her upwards, trying to signal for hem to pull up. Lio smiled calmly and wickedly shook her head before disappearing behind her younger friend.

Before could act to defy her new teacher, she was maneuvering over and under and around the sharp outcroppings of the canyon's walls, just seven feet of space between them.

She said the words of her teachers in her head as if they were prayers, "Be the leaf."

"Do not grasp tightly."

"Instinct is a lie,  
>Told by a fearful body,<br>Hoping  
>To be wrong."<p>

She noticed only then that the grip on her glider was so tight it might break the prongs. And the gale against her was too strong. She turned herself upside down, a common maneuver to regain control. Lio was flying above her, grinning with assurance.

"Don't be afraid," Lio mouthed the words.

The gale forced her up, almost to the point that she could have stood if not for sailing down to the mountainside. The tail of her glider hit something hard and she felt it snap off before, as her world turned into a whirling, spinning madhouse, she and the small tail fins vanished in a flash.

Yangchen wasn't afraid anymore: she was insensate with terror. She sent bursts of air with open palms in every direction that was remotely toward the ground, trying to slow down, trying to stop. And failing.

That was when a long spidery hand yanked her up by the front of her robe. Instinctually, Yangchen wrapped her arms around the warm body that was hovering above her now.

It took some extra effort, but Lio managed to fly her back all the way to the Temple.

All the Air Temples were truly places of beauty; their towers and bridges were a mirror image set in stone of the benders themselves: slim, hard, elegant and smooth, gracefully reflecting the winds of the high altitudes they were built in. To see a temple on approach on approach could make you believe it could take flight itself.

The Western Air Temple was a little different.

Well, a lot different. It was the only temple not on a mountaintop. It was built some 150 down into a cliffside…upside down. The towers were built in reverse, to the thicker bases were nearer the top so their own weight didn't tear them off. The towers were arranged three deep and 6 across. Above the temple was a long massive plateau where groves of fruit and vegetables were kept.

From far off, Yangchen could see her sisters walking the porches, bridges, and platforms, a few others on Flying Bison and gliders, soaring idly around.

In the century and a half since the end of the 100 Year War, the Air Nomads had been born, midwifed by Avatar by Aang himself.

It had actually started during the war itself. Drawn by the stories, poetry, and wisdom of the airbending gurus; those with diseases of the mind or soul, loners and hermits came the then-ruined temples and quiet islands, often aboard primitive air blimps.

Some of them found the enlightenment they had been seeking, or at least claimed to when Aang returned.

And then something stranger happened: some of the squatters began to manifest airbending. Nature itself was filling the vacuum left by Sozin's Genocide. Or perhaps the odd mix of the mad and the wise had been imbued with the spiritual aura of the temples.

Since that time, the Air Nomads had returned to their ancient ways. Males and females lived apart, meeting only for fertility festivals to make children. With the exception of a small number if Fire Nation refugees from the civil war, The Air Nomads had spent the last 50 years in isolation. They closed themselves off to a world outside that even the young sisters like Yangchen knew was eating itself alive.

**********  
>Tyro was hating his life.<p>

When Koko and Shaw had left alone in the room he'd woke up in, all he could do was sit there, undo his braid and run his fingers through his hair as the dread set in.

Koko had talked to him a long time about what this meant, about how "the people" needed him. The state governments would want him- probably in chains. Tyro hadn't heard most of it.

He stood up from the bed and snapped into a horse stance. In a sweeping motion from his abdomen, two open hands ripped open a hole in the earthen floor. Tyro dropped down inside, and after tunneling further sealed the hole behind him.

Tyro pile-drove deep along the surface, wondering how far he would get before the other earthbenders among the migrants sensed him.

After several minutes, his muscles were starting to tire. Tyro had always been strong, but this was the most intense bending he'd ever done…. that he had clear memory of, if what Koko and Shaw had told him was true. He collapsed on his knees, breathless.

He saw a faint blue light come across and illuminate his hands, and then the rest of his body too, casting his shadow against the wall of bedrock. Tyro stood on his feet and turned to see the source of the light.

Sitting in a lotus position was a woman in loose blue-grey trousers, big brown hide boots and wearing a light blue colored fur-lined coat. Her hair was cut short so it only went to her neck, and shared the dull, chocolaty color of her skin. To Tyro she looked like an older woman, at least in her fifties and although he had never had much interest in girls, he knew that she was beautiful; with smooth cheeks that curved down to her chin almost like a heart-shape. The brightness of her eyes alone could have accounted for the faint blue glow filling the cavern.

"So, " her voice was deeper than he had expected, and a little gravely, "You're the one to take my place."

* * *

><p><em>So-you-know-who is about to give the new Avatar guidance. This is the pretty standard "Refusal of the call" stage that most heroes have in their stories.<em>

_I have some concerns about this chapter I hope some readers can give me feedback on._

_1. Who do you feel about Tyro's character? Is it rich enough. Does he seem to have a personality? Same for Shaw for that matter._

_2. How do you feel about the prose at the start of the chapter that introduced Yangchen? Was it smooth and flowing? _

_3. Anything else? _

_This will likely be a very long fanfiction, because I'm like 6000 words in and he hasn't even started firebending._

_Much thanks to those that are following me!_


	7. Deep Deep Down, Far Far In

_**A/N: **WOW. This chapter was long, and exhausting to write. I'm honestly starting to feel overwhelmed because I'm up to like 16,000 words I guess and the journey is just __**beginning**__. They still have to meet Yangchen and the waterbender I've sketched out in my mind. I could really use some feedback, especially critical, to bolster my resolve._

_How do you guys feel about this chapter? I worry that there was a lot of exposition in the dialogue, a lot of talkiness._

_How do you feel about the characters? Do Shaw and Tyro have chemistry?_

_Please read and review!_

* * *

><p>Tyro didn't answer. He stood there in shock and slowly rising alarm. The Water Tribe spoke again (Tyro was still too afraid to even think her name)- "Where exactly did you think you were going to go?"<p>

"Anywhere or the trains go," he said simply, "To Gaoling City. To Sandlocke City. Anywhere not here."

She tipped her head from side to side, as if to weigh the ideas in her mind. "Spoken like a true vagabond." The corners of her mouth curved up into a wicked, assured smile, "You were a nomad in a previous life. Many times."

"No," he affirmed, but Tyro felt like he was floating of his legs, shaking, so he banged a fist on the cavern wall and sent stalactites shooting up at her.

The Water Tribe woman apparated closer. "I'm a spirit. That obviously wasn't going to work." There was no judgment or anger in the way she spoke.

She continued, "You could go to Gaoling City… And there you would still be the Avatar. You could go to the North Pole, and you would still be the Avatar. What you are is constant. You are the Rock of Ages. Heaven and Earth together could not conceal it."

"Hardly anyone knows what I look like. I could disappear if I wanted to," Tyro said in defense.

"Not yet, but they will. And now the state governments know your profile. They will know that you are a wanderer. The councils of the Northern and Southern Water Tribes…." She closer her eyes briefly to let out a breath, "…won't be friendly. Especially the North.

Every hobo camp you know will raided and rounded up. No running off this time. Every kind face you've ever met on the road is about to be put in police custody. I don't have to tell you what will happen to many of them."

And she didn't, truly, either. The Dai Li dungeons were only the worst, and the most creative. Broken feet, broken ribs, torn-off fingernails, empty eye-sockets…faces of friends that were seen being pushed into the truck and never seen again, no matter where you looked. When the stories around the campfire turned dark and angry, the subject was all the things the police had figured out how to do with metal cables and a baton.

Truthfully, he was thankfully for the people who'd welcomed him to their little campsites and sleeping spots, pooling their food together and had made a 100 different kinds of soups and stews, no two ever alike. They hadn't even questioned him when shared a sleeping bag with another boy. Sometimes, they even gave him a knowing wink. They knew. There was no judgment, only the easy friendship of people with not family to take care of them, so they took care of each other.

"None of that will be my fault," Tyro said.

"But it's your responsibility to make it stop, because only can."

"I wasn't the one who screwed it all up. I didn't take the pickers' land. I didn't dump shit in the rivers."

She sighed, "No, but if you want to live on this world, if you want to die old and happy by a campfire, you must accept what you are. By the time I was fifty, I could see what was happening. I tried to best to slow it down. I knew that going on a rampage wouldn't have worked. The power structures would have been rebuilt and survived my death. I also knew that the White Lotus couldn't be trusted. So I…made some unusual friends. You will meet them when the time comes. They've been waiting for you, for a chance to bring the world back to its roots."

Tyro listened in silence.

"That is all I can tell you for now. But I will be close when you need my guidance," she gave a rueful smile, "You'll find the other Avatars…unavailable."

Her form started to fade away, when Tyro called to her, "Korra! I thought you died in your 80s, you look.-"

She didn't let him finish, "I died this beautiful at 82."

And then she was gone."

"You spoke…with Korra?" Koko was frank but hesitant.

Tyro took a deep breath and said, "Yes, I know I have to help, but I don't know how."

To him the question seemed unanswerable. Another army, a larger one, would come to the migrant town. Their situation was untenable. They had already explained to him what he had done to the first army, and Tyro had no idea how to go about doing it again. Or as they referred to it: "The Avatar state."

He felt like the weight of the word still hadn't really come down on him yet.

"Avatar."

"He'd returned to the room to find Koko and Shaw and the Union Council in the middle of a heated discussion.

Well, actually, Shaw was in the corner, leaning on the back legs of a chair and scanning a newspaper. Either he'd been given a new pair of suspenders, or someone had re-sewed the straps.

Tyro sat on his bed, enclosed by the anxious, studying glares of the council members.

"Every migrant camp here in the South will go on strike after what's happened. I've already received word from the other union presidents. Your return has given them hope," she continued. "The problem is that even an entire year of no harvests isn't enough to get the UFV or the state governments to bow. We've been fighting for years just to be recognized, and failed.

They have millions in gold and copper currency kept in banks. The fact that they won't have to pay us won't hurt either. They have food frozen in storage waiting to be sold. We can't do this alone," she finished, her voice firm and knowing.

"'This''"-Shaw was heard from the corner, his words lazy and slurred, "Is starting to sound like a war."

"Or a 'revolution'," one councilman said in approval.

"'This'" Koko took control again, "Is a total boycott. All the food in these fields will be eaten, packed into cars and smuggled to other migrant camps, given away, or burned. We'll desert this town. The army will come and the battle will already be over. It's important that they have no chance for retaliation."

One councilwoman stepped in, "If the Avatar goes to the industrial unions and convinces them to join the boycott, the the UFV and the state governments will be completely encircled."

"And what will they eat?" Tyro asked, and it came out more pointed and accusatory than he thought he could ever be.

Koko answered, "Overthrow the city mayor and take the UFV'S frozen reserves." Her eyes briefly glanced sharply to the right, to indicate Shaw, who had already gone back to his newspaper, "And this barfly is an acquaintance of yours?"

Shaw without looking away from his newspaper, drawled out, "I want it on the historical record that Ran-Shaw of the Fire Nation was the one who encouraged the Avatar to start this revolt."

Koko looked at Tyro, waiting for an explanation.

"He's a friend. He was there, when the riot was started."

"That _you _started," Shaw corrected, while putting the newspaper to the side, "The passive voice is a how people avoid responsibility for their actions."

A councilman added, "We can find a proper escort for the Avatar."

"You have. I know my history," Shaw stood up, unsteady and swaying on his feet, "The Avatar Cycle is Fire, Air, Water, Earth. Short Rock here knows his eartbending, and so the next is fire," the union councilors eyed each other nervously, while Shaw held out a single un-flickering flame that came to life in his hand, "And do you see another firebending former schoolteacher around here?"

* * *

><p>Some hours later, Shaw was regretting his bravado. For one thing, he hadn't remembered to stock up on liquor. He had one 750 ml bottle of moonshine, and he was worried about when exactly it would run out.<p>

Koko had sent them off to Omashu with 300 copper pieces, salt pork and water.

The days were getting hotter and more humid, the night dew clinging to the air more and more during the day.

Five hours into their journey, sometime around midday, on the road north to Omashu, Shaw was out of breath, the soles of Shaw's feet were burning, and his legs ached. Tyro didn't look anymore tired than if he had been out for a morning jaunt.

"We have the money. We could've grabbed a train, and we'd be in Omashu by nightfall," he huffed out.

Tyro shook his head, "Police will be on the trains, looking for me."

"They don't have your exact face, or your name. You don't have ID, either."

"There are police in plain clothes. They could eavesdrop on us. What if they saw Koko's books?" He gestured to the sack on Shaw's back.

His face dropped a little, realizing the boy _was _talking sense. Tyro had already thought it all out, and never said a word about it.

It was easy to see too, why this kind of excercision came so easy to him. Tyro's ches was square and solid, his arms dropped out of his shirt not so much like anything flesh and blood but more like a sculpture of deep olive-colored stone. Even in casual walk, his arms and legs moved with visible strength. He was short too, and even with all those scars to prove that the boy's earthbending wasn't some hobby, he still looked young and small somehow.

All of this was making Shaw very aware of how out-of-shape he was. He looked at his own arms. They were soft and small, and he could almost loop his long index finger and thumb around his biceps. Even a light breath and you could see his ribs. The years of hard drinking, hard drugs and getting nourishment from not much else had done that to him.

"And can we trust the hobos?"

"Hobos ask where your traveling to and where you just were, and not much else. People have their reasons for riding the trains or walking the roads. It's personal."

Shaw wondered what made this boy runaway from home. When he had been a schoolteacher, he heard stories about what kids found when they got back home, and they might have shocked him if he wasn't Ran-Shaw. Mostly, it was just sad.

The whole plan to convince the industrial unions to revolt was ballsy….and vague.

Avatar shows up.

Attacks city government…somehow, preferably something very symbolic to raise morale.

The unions rally to his side.

Victory?

It sounded like a prank idea Shaw would write on a cocktail napkin while utterly smashed.

Near dark, they set up a camp some several yards from the road and Shaw lit them a fire on dry twigs and underbrush.

He pulled the books from his satchel, with their plain colored covers and yellowed pages.

"So which would rather start with_?-Kong Fuze's Principles of Ethics_?, _The Way of the Elements?_ by Lao Tze? Or perhaps your feeling nostalgic for your past lives? _The Great Feats of Avatar Kyoshi_?"

Tyro, laying on his sleeping roll, took a minute to answer. "What does any of this hve to do with helping the pickers?"

"Cause the Avatar is much more than muscle, as Korra probably told you. The Avatar negotiates peace and uses their moral authority to shape the world. Armies don't shape nations: ideals do. The Four Nations relate to the world differently because their ideas and ideals are different." Shaw tossed a book into Tyro's lap.

"I can't read this," Tyro said after an awkward pause.

"What do you mean?" he arched a brow.

"I left home at 12. I was never good at anyways. I've hardly read since then."

Shaw felt his face reel from the discovery. _The Avatar is an illiterate homeless kid. Well, at least we now know why's he's been missing all this time._ When he noticed the hurt on Tyro's face, Shaw caught himself and added, "That's not a problem, actually. I used to teach kids in the Fire Nation who were in their final years of school but read books for grammar schoolers. A lot of them had very special talents actually."

That _was _true. He remembered one girl who really had a thing for public speaking and could memorize oratory, but her calligraphy and decoding were slow to improve compared to other children. She had to have everything on tape.

"I know: read aloud" Shaw offered.

"Fine," Tyro muttered, along with something about not being a little kid.

"Okay, well, let's start from the ground up. How about: Prince Wu's _The Forms of Government_?"

Tyro just shrugged, and Shaw took that for a "yes", and started to read.

* * *

><p>"We're sparring today," Shaw announced as the stood facing each other on the open ground of the clearing, "The Avatar has talent with all four elements, which means you can firebend."<p>

Tyro had to remind himself that having this drunkard with him was probably less of a pain than the escort that the migrants had pressed for. "And how's that supposed to work? Do I just look at the fire and think it to move or something?"

Shaw scratched the hair under this cap, "Well, let me think for a second."

At the edge of their informal arena, a pack of wild dogs was skulking in the thick underbrush, probably lured by the smell of their food.

Forgetting about Shaw entirely, Tyro grabbed some of their dried salt pork and walked to the dog pack. He knelt down and waved the meat out to be taken.

Two of the bigger dogs warily approached. They were long, skinny creatures with broken teeth and healed gashes on their snouts and bodies.

_They're a lot like me. A little afraid, beaten up, but still kicking, _he thought.

They snatched the meat from Tyro's hand and then began to tear apart in a friendly tug of war.

When most of it was gone, Tyro scratched the dog who stayed behind the ear. The dog rubbed its face on his hand and leg, The skin below the short brown fur was cracked, dried and chewed.

"You've been itching yourself to death, pup," Tyro said with sympathy.

A bolt of hot red fire flew past him and landed in the thick bush, where the other hounds were still skulking. The dry tinder and leaves ignited with an explosive roar.

The pack scattered, yelping and barking. A stream of fire landed to the right and then another hit even deeper into the bush. Tyro jumped up but stood there in shock as the blaze grew and grew. The dogs were being encircled, trapped.

Tyro crossed two fists sideways over the wrists and bended up a wave of earth, scattering the flames and burning and snuffing out part of the fire before lowering it back down for the dogs to escape. But it was futile, it just continued to spread.

"Not gonna work, Short Rock." Tyro turned around to see Shaw there, holding a flame in a open hand and then moving into a fighting stance, two fists outward. "If you want to save your furry friends, you're gonna have to snuff that fire out by bending it. Firebending comes from the breath, so I suggest you take a deep one."

"What the fuck are you doing?" Tyro screamed.

Shaw shrugged, "Whatever I want. Maybe one or two of those scavengers will even be edible when it's all over…If you don't something quick." Spinning off his backfoot, he hurled another fireball.

Tyro tried to intercept it with his own projectiles, but it was too slow and missed.

He had seen other firebenders in action, but Shaw was different. He moved much more like a boxer: quick punches and palm strikes, only occasionally spinning on his feet or with his hands for an especially fiery strike. His kicks were low to the ground swung from the knee. His flames lingered longer, burned hotter. It was then that Tyro realized that Shaw was much like himself: not a professional, just a talented street firefighter from the School of Hard Knocks.

For a few moments they attacked and counterattacked, neither dodging but simply trying to overpower the other, but Tyro was retreating, and the dogs were getting closer to being burned alive.

Shaw fired a great river of fire from his hands, and Tyro knew he couldn't absorb it, couldn't block it. The light was searing his eyes. He took a deep breath, and in that moment felt all his strength gather in his lungs. When he exhaled, a river of flame came from his hands. A lot of it, so hot it was charring the dirt.

The two opposing fires canceled each other out, leaving behind smoke and steam.

Shaw let out a scratchy cackle.

Tyro was acting on his gut now. He could feel the connection to the fire, something that went from his belly to his lungs and out into his hands, the same sort of bond to the earth he had known his whole life. When he closed his fist tightly, the blaze Shaw had set was snuffed out.

Shaw attacked again, quick punches and exploding comets of fire. He approached steadily, and as he did he managed to light the underbrush all over again. Tyro answered with kicks that landed on the ground with a thud, throwing his frustration into furious but unsteady motion.

Shaw called out, "Getting angry isn't going to work. Anger will burn you out."

"Enough!" Tyro yelled during a pause, "the dogs did nothing to you."

"Neither did the pig that salt pork came from, but look where we are."

"It's not right!"

"Why? Says who, says what?"

"Because…because," Tyro struggled to put the feeling in the pit of his stomach into the right words, "Because they're living creatures, and they're not yours to hurt just for laughs! It's cruel."

Shaw dropped his stance and smiled, "There it is." With a wave of the hand, he snuffed out the fires and stepped closer to his friend.

"It's like a told you last night," Shaw lit a flame in his hand and held it out for Tyro to see, "Ideals matter, and ideals draw on our emotions. I had an uncle once, who was an alcoholic and a drug addict. He was also a deadbeat dad and abandoned his children so he could be free and wild. It was a selfish thing to do. When they got older and my uncle would try to visit them, usually drunk, they'd refuse to even say a word to him," Shaw's voice thickened, "It was eating him up inside, knowing that his own children, his flesh and blood, did not love him. More than 15 years after first abandoning them, my uncle quit-the booze, the opium, everything. And he never looked back either. He had a profound psychic change. That doesn't mean he was suddenly serene and peaceful like an Air Nomad. He had bad road rage, had a big temper, always talked too loud. But my uncle managed to be something positive to his children rather than nothing. The strength to do that came from a feeling, an emotion that was deep, deep down, far, far in." The fire in his hand intensified, larger, hotter. "Fire is new in every moment. The flame in my hand is not the same flame I held a second ago. Fire is new in every moment. By controlling your breath, you control your emotions and channel them to remake the world around you into something new, and even to remake yourself into a different person."

Tyro listened in silence. He mimicked Shaw and ignited a flame in his hand, watching it shutter and ballet over his palm. He was fascinated with its movement, with its life, his own inhales and exhales making it shrink and revive. It lived or died by his whim, Tyro realized and the feeling that gave him was strange and hypnotic.

Tyro felt a warm, furry body run between his legs and jump up and nip at his shirt.

It was the dog from before. A few strands of fur were singed, but otherwise it was grinning and tail-wagging. He lifted up one of the dog's hind legs and looked underneath.

"Oh, so you're a girl," he said and set it back down.

"Ahem," Shaw coughed out, "Okay, so I'm philosoph-ied out for today. We'll start again tomorrow." He walked away, muttering something about where his liquor bottle was.


End file.
